CHESAPEAKE — There are still a few drop cloths draped here and there. Workmen in dusty khaki overalls trudge in and out of the front door. But for the most part, the new Comfort Suites in Chesapeake looks ready for business.

Owner Hammond Patel hopes to have a soft opening next week with a grand opening in the summer. But already he is booked for July, thanks to a youth soccer tournament coming to the region.

As he scans the halls of his new domain explaining a special “green” thermostat in each suite or showing off the state of the art exercise room adjoining the pool area, Patel agrees this is a far cry from an earlier career. But it’s not one the businessman with the international background is complaining about.

“It’s almost like a dream come true,” he said as he walked down one of the chocolate brown carpeted corridors of the inn.

“When we started work, all this was fill dirt, dead land,” he said.

Now in weeks, Patel wants to see his goal reach fruition: Families and business travelers coming in and out of the hotel.

While his name sounds foreign to the ears of native Lawrence Countians, he jokes that where his family comes from Patel is as common a name as Smith or Jones in the United States. That place he’s referring to is the Indian province of Gujarat that borders Pakistan on the northwest.

However, it is Mozambique that Patel calls his birth place, the African nation where his father came when he was a boy of 10.

Patel’s father soon moved his family to England, which is where the entrepreneur got his education.

It was an education that didn’t seem to fit the curriculum for a future businessman because Patel graduated with a degree in biochemistry. With that he headed to the classroom to teach, first in England, then in the U.S. How he arrived at the latter venue, Patel joked, was directed by “destiny, karma, call it what you like.”

He took a sabbatical leave of absence from his teaching post in England with the intention of discovering his family’s native land of India. What he did instead was discover a new home when he decided to come play tourist in America.

“I fell in love with it,” he said. “I said I am going to live the American dream.”

Here he met a fellow educator who directed him to some possible teaching jobs. He picked one and gave the school an offer.

He would donate one month as a teacher without pay. If they liked him, he would get a job. They did and for seven years he taught in North Carolina school districts as a math teacher and then as chairperson of the science department.

“It took off,” Patel said. “I love education and I love teaching.”

But with a new country came the desire to meet a new challenge and Patel started segueing into the business arena taking over a motel in Ashland, Ky., before eyeing the eastern end of Lawrence County for his latest venture.

“This is where the growth is,” Patel said. “What makes it viable is the Interstate, Huntington, Marshall, Proctorville and the shopping centers.”

What Patel is offering the region is the upper scale level of the Comfort Inn hotels. The entire facility is made up of suites, not simply motel rooms. There are 61 suites on three floors, including rooms that are wheel-chair accessible.

Three have built-in Jacuzzis. On the first floor is a swimming pool adjoining an exercise room that offers a treadmill, bicycle and multi-gym. Each suite has both wireless and wire Internet connections with two phones. There is also a guest laundry area as well as a breakfast room where continental meals will be served.

His venture into the business world has taught Patel some basics tenets for success.

He identifies them as common sense; a strong family for support; a strong partnership and the ability to be flexible. That last one can come into play daily.

“The drawings will show one thing but when you work to accomplish it, changes have to be made,” he said.

While Patel is the driving force for the project, he declines to take exclusive credit for its realization.

“It is team work,” he said. “It is not one person.”